Conjunction of Mars and Uranus

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Mars and Uranus will share the same right ascension, with Mars passing 1°03' to the north of Uranus.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 18:20 (EST), 45° above your south-western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting at 22:40.

Mars will be at mag 1.0, and Uranus at mag 5.8, both in the constellation Aries.

The pair will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars and Uranus around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Mars 01h48m20s 11°40'N Aries 1.0 5"7
Uranus 01h48m20s 10°37'N Aries 5.8 3"4

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 64° from the Sun, which is in Capricornus at this time of year.

The sky on 13 Feb 2019

The sky on 13 February 2019
Sunrise
06:42
Sunset
17:13
Twilight ends
18:48
Twilight begins
05:07


Waxing Gibbous

64%

9 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:18 12:41 18:05
Venus 04:17 08:58 13:39
Moon 11:21 18:35 01:56
Mars 09:11 15:58 22:44
Jupiter 02:50 07:26 12:01
Saturn 04:43 09:20 13:57
All times shown in EST.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

06 Jan 2019  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion
11 Aug 2019  –  Uranus enters retrograde motion
28 Oct 2019  –  Uranus at opposition
10 Jan 2020  –  Uranus ends retrograde motion

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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